KIDS play in streets. It's a fact of life. And even if the city Council passes a law against it, it's going to happen, especially on cul-de-sacs. Why did the nitwit
cross the roadIn fact, people buy houses on cul-de-sacs chiefly so their kids can play in the street. Some go as far as to erect basketball goals at the end of cul-de-sacs.
As a driver, I don't mind kids playing in streets, because they usually scatter when they see a car approach.
What bugs me is a growing trend among teenagers in Hawaii to walk deliberately slow across streets, stopping cars in their tracks. It apparently is the cool thing to do these days.
Anyone who drives has been faced with this phenomenon. It's usually two or three kids in baggy clothes slouching across the street as slow as they can go, usually looking drivers of the cars they've stopped in the eye. It's a power trip. Although a misguided one.
And it's a direct result of the failure of our schools to teach fundamental science and physics to kids. The problem is that no one has explained to these geniuses what will happen when two objects of different sizes and weights try to occupy the exact same point in space at the same time. If a punk with a funny haircut weighing about 96 pounds attempts to occupy the same space on a public road as a, say, 4,000 pound Ford F-150 Pickup truck moving at 35 miles per hour, the following scientific result will occur: The punk will fly several yards and land in a heap of blood and broken bones and the truck will have a slight smudge on the bumper.
I'M not saying that should happen. I'm just saying that that will happen if such a situation occurs. It is what they call in the gaming world "no contest."
So why does a kid think he can cross a road, usually not in a crosswalk, deliberately stopping traffic? Because, he figures that he is an outlaw and the drivers of vehicles are law-abiding citizens.
This is another breakdown in the education system. See, the young punk with the weird haircut simply equates the ability to own or drive a vehicle with a certain level of intelligence, usually higher than his own. This is wrong. There are plenty of nitwits who drive cars.
But that's not why these rebels without a crosswalk are idiots. They are idiots because they assume that most drivers are paying attention and will slow down when they see the nitwits crossing the street. In fact, many drivers are far too busy doing other things (putting on makeup, lighting cigarettes, excavating their nasal cavities, changing CDs or making goo-goo eyes at their passenger) to notice some dumb-dumb trying to moke-out in the middle of the road.
You can't teach intelligence at school. But you can teach odds. And maybe if these guys understood that the odds of survival between someone putting on eyeliner while skippering a 5,000-pound Chevy Suburban and a kid who thinks it's cool to walk with his pants around his knees are heavily in favor of the babe in the speeding metal death machine.
They say Las Vegas was built by suckers. But even the most brain-dead bettor wouldn't risk what these kids risk. The payoff just isn't worth it. If you win, you successfully cross the road, you feel tough because you've inconvenienced a few drivers, who frankly do give a mongooses' behind anyway. If you lose, you die or are seriously injured.
That's not being tough or cool, that's being dumber than a pile of highway cones.
So, yes, Councilwoman Donna Mercado Kim, children should not play in the streets. But at least most of them have enough sense to scatter when the cars come. It's the brainiacs who don't have the survival instincts of your basic road-crossing chicken who are the problem.